Recently, Google announced a new protocol called SPDY that is designed to get information to your browser quicker when downloading a web page. As well as introducing SPDY, Google have also launched the Google Public DNS that aims to speed up the time it takes to resolve a web address to an IP address.
A quick run down of what that means… When you type in the name of a website in the browser, such as www.techasis.com, a DNS is queried and the name is translated in to an IP address. DNS can be looked at as a phone book as each domain name has an IP address assigned. Each time a domain name is used in your browser it ads a little bit of time to a page load. By using Google Public DNS servers, their aim is to lessen that time to give a better user experience.
The changes are simple to make and require that you just set your DNS server information in your network connection to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and that’s it. However, it might not be that simple for everybody who reads this, so below is a quick tutorial on how to make the necessary changes.
Google Public DNS Settings for Windows 7
If you are a Windows 7 user click on the Windows Logo/Start Button at the bottom left of the screen, Click Control Panel (right hand column), View Network Status and Tasks, Change Adapter Settings. In this screen you will see a list of available network connections as below.
Double click on the active network connection (in my case it’s the wireless connection), then click on Properties…
Highlight IPV4 as pictured below and click Properties…
Make a note of the current settings just incase you want to switch back and once done, enter the DNS information as shown below then hit OK, Close, Close until you are out.
Now that the changes have been made you are using Google’s DNS servers. If for some reason you seem to witness a slow down and want to switch back the DNS servers to what they were then follow the instructions above and when you get to the IPV4 properties page, re-enter your old settings.
As always, feel free to post any questions below.